


we can only own our dreams

by gitta



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hound AU, Slow Burn, if i keep writing it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 09:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12579036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gitta/pseuds/gitta
Summary: There are two modes for a hound: on and off. Usually, they work you so hard when you’re on that the moment you’re off, you fall asleep. If you can stay awake, there isn’t very much different from when you’re on. Your hands are not your own, your muscles listen to what they tell you. Some hounds can control their eyes, but that’s almost worst. You have to pretend to be all the way off, or else they’ll make you off. Then they’re start looking into how off everyone else is. So you keep your eyes forward, until you’re free. Until you’re asleep.Hound AU, where Clarice is in the Hound Program. not going to be super shippy for at least two chapters, sorry.





	we can only own our dreams

**Author's Note:**

> i had this idea a week ago, and i had to get it down. there's some thunderblink in this chapter if you squint, but they'll probably get closer if i continue this. unbeta'd and a little rough.

Clarice Fong. 

Hound #AL19. 

Abilities: Dimensional transportation

LoR: 4. 

Comments: Watch closely, ability requires awareness level 3. 

There are two modes for a hound: on and off. Usually, they work you so hard when you’re on that the moment you’re off, you fall asleep. If you can stay awake, there isn’t very much different from when you’re on. Your hands are not your own, your muscles listen to what they tell you. Some hounds can control their eyes, but that’s almost worst. You have to pretend to be all the way off, or else they’ll make you off. Then they’re start looking into how off everyone else is. So you keep your eyes forward, until you’re free. Until you’re asleep.

 

Gus returned from his mission at 16:00, but they keep him in tests for at least two more hours. Clarice counted down the minutes until she heard him fall asleep, and then went to sleep herself. They can’t control when they wake up, so they have to be careful about when they go to sleep. Otherwise they’ll miss one another. 

Clarice awoke surrounded by green. Plants surrounded her, not unusual, but then she saw the crumbling building, and felt the oppressive heat.z they’re in Alantra still, which is weird. Usually they’re in the remains of Rachel’s home. Rachel is there anyway, sitting cross legged, and watching a few kids play around. Clarice recognized a few of them, but she hadn’t seen one or two yet. That was bad.

“How many new ones?” She asked Rachel, sitting down beside her, “And where are we?”

“Ask Gus,” Rachel asked, “He’s the one who brought us here. We were in Alaska, before. Then he fell asleep, and we were here,”

“I don’t remember this place,” He said, appearing beside them. He looked tired, and pale. They must’ve worked him hard, which isn’t surprising. He’s one of their favorites, both for his ability to disrupt powers and because the way he uses it is so simply. It’s like a switch. Clarice has heard them talking about her, about being worried because she needs to be able to know where she’s going. Rachel’s the same way. It’s good. They can spend hours here, planning. 

“Why were you in Alaska?” Clarice asked, after a moment of pausing. They always do that, when the subject of memory comes. None of them can remember much of anything. Rachel has her home, and Clarice has an empty street in the middle of nowhere. 

“One of the younger girls was forgetting what her house looked like,” Rachel answered, looking over to them, “I brought her here, played a memory for her. Her mother’s face.” Rachel sounded wistful, but that was empaths. 

“One of the new ones?” Clarice pressed. Sometimes it’s hard to get an answer out of Rachel. Her mind isn’t broken, not more than any of their minds are. But they’re always doing tests on her, trying to figure out how the telepathic mind works. And this world for them takes so much energy. 

“There are new ones?” Gus asked, looking away from the building. He had been looking at it as though it was the stairway to Heaven. “How many?”

“Six. The youngest is nine, the oldest nineteen,” Rachel answered, “And no. It was Samantha. The girl who can copy powers.”

Clarice remembered Samantha. She had never been a hound without the dreams. She should have all her memories, no need for Rachel to work with her.

“Has she not been storing her memories properly?” Clarice asked, worried. “Have they found a way to get into them? Did she say if they asked her about it? You need to scan them every time, Rachel.”

“I know,” Rachel said, looking at her sharply. “I know. They didn’t take the memory. Faces are hard to hold in the mind, especially after a few years. I just...She was crying, Clarice. I wanted to give her something nice. And everyone liked the snow.”

“Oh, good,” Clarice said, the wind coming out of her sails. “I’m sorry,”

“It’s fine,” Rachel said, looking away, “I understand. I couldn’t be there when they came in, the new kids. I was with Doctor Campbell.”

They talked like that for a little while. There’s no new telepaths from this group, which means that Rachel is still the only one who can create the dream. There’s a girl who can create a kind of sunlight, though, and the two of them are talking about that, and waiting for Gus.

They have a rule. Nobody can ask about a mission until the person who’s on it says that it’s okay. Clarice instituted it, after nearly biting Audrey’s head off for asking if she was alright for the eightieth time. Everyone had begun to use it, though. People needed the time to process what their bodies had been doing, time to come to terms with what they had done. Finally, Gus looked back at them, away from the destroyed mansion.

“I knew someone,” He said. Gus is a quiet guy, most of the time. He’s in the field a lot, so a fair amount of his time is spent debriefing with them, or silently thinking about himself. Sometimes, though, when they’re calm and happy, he’s cocky, almost reckless with what he thinks about what they should do. “On the mission, a man looked into my face, and I knew him. John. He was saying my name. I wanted to scream his. I couldn’t, and he had to punch me out. It was a transport, and I was there to stop anyone who wanted to get them out.”

“How did you know his name was John?” Clarice asked, her heart beating fast. It was always exciting when someone remembered something. “Did you remember it?”

“Yeah.” Gus said, almost smiling. It was back to a frown almost immediately, but Clarice saw it, “I remembered it. Thunderbird. John.Thunderbird. And...Proudstar. There's a Proudstar in there. He was a mutant.”

“Guy has a lot of names,” Clarice said, and turned to Rachel, “Can you find him?” She asked Rachel, but the other girl was already deep within herself. Gus stiffened as Rachel slipped into his mind. Some of the younger kids didn’t mind it when Rachel went inside them, but all it did was remind Clarice of the way that Dr. Campbell did it. It was like a snake. 

The world shimmered for a moment, startling everyone in the dream. The world didn’t change though, which caused some confusion. Clarice was worried that Rachel had been unsuccessful, but then she saw him.

It was a man, tall and...well, the only real word was built. He was handsome, with dark hair, and a smiling face. Clarice knew she was inside Gus’s memory, because she trusted him, immediately. Clarice had never trusted anyone like that, and she wouldn’t feel that way after an instant.

Gus rose and walked to the man, slipping into a memory. Clarice envied him, in that moment. She hadn’t found any of her memories yet. Rachel needed a tether, a string to grab and follow through the maze of one’s mind. Clarice didn’t have any tethers. That wasn’t unusual. Most of them that had been there at the creation of the dream didn’t have any strings. The program was always through in its destruction of self. 

“Hey, Gus.” The man, presumably John, said, relaxed and comfortable. Clarice and Rachel stayed on the ground, where Gus had been. “You ready to start?”  
“Hey, John,” Gus said, turning into who he used to be. It was striking, seeing him lose the trauma of the program, find the kind of happiness that Clarice barely even knew anymore. She tried not to feel jealous of him, but couldn’t really help it, “Yeah, I think I am,”

Everyone had started to come over, and watch. There was a little whispering, but mostly people were silent. It was Gus’s first memory, after all. Audrey slithered up to Clarice, her tail trailing behind her. Audrey was the fourth person that they had brought into the dream. She was useful, because she could sense what someone’s power was. That meant sentinel services would never get rid of her. 

“He’s cute,” She whispered to Clarice, “Gus’s friend.” It came out like a hiss. 

“Yeah,” Clarice said, though she wouldn’t call the man cute. He was too adult for cute, she thought. He looked mature, she thought, though how she got that, she had no idea. Maybe it was more of Gus’s memory seeping into her.

“Alright, I got this,” John said, holding up a small burner phone, “All you have to do is stop the signal without frying the phone entirely,”

“Come on, that’s easy,” Gus said, cockily. Clarice saw Rachel smile at his words, and found herself smiling. It was always a little odd, to hear him act this way, especially for the two of them. 

Clarice had been dreaming of nothing, the first time she heard the long, whimpering sobs. She had been far less herself then, but something in it had come awake, and she had gone towards the sobs, in her mind. Rachel was such a powerful telepathic that when she created a link between her mind and someone else's’, she could give the other the ability to follow that line. She hadn’t been trying to summon Clarice to her. Clarice had just been the only one awake enough to hear it.

The dream had just been a long grey hallway, like how the compound was, then. Clarice had walked down the hallway until she found Rachel, bleeding from incisions on the crown of her head, and crumpled to the ground. Clarice hadn’t had much emotion then, and just stared at the crying girl for a long time, trying very hard to remember how to feel. Eventually Rachel had looked up. Her eyes brightened, and Clarice had felt something. Then she felt everything.

It had been four years after her induction to the Hound Program, and three and a half since she had a real emotion. The overload had been terrible, forcing her to the floor beside Rachel. The two of them had sat like that, sobbing into one another, for the rest of the dream. The next night, Clarice had woken up in the dream again, this time purposefully.

“It’s not about blunt force,” John said, in the memory, laughing a little, “It’s about skill. Don’t just make it explode. That’ll give you away in an instant. But if you can just turn it off...They won’t know what hit ‘em,”

He was a good teacher, Clarice thought, comforting and reassuring. Not like the teachers in the programs. That was ‘master or die’. Or, more accurate, master how to do this one thing that we want you to do, or die. Do the only useful thing that you can do, or die. Die slowly, your powers sucking out any energy you can, or die. Die, die, or die.

“Oh no,” Rachel said, and the world shimmered. John Proudstar disappeared, and the world turned grey, “Oh no, I’m waking up,”

Clarice immediately turned to everyone surrounding the memory. Most of them were already snapping away from Rachel’s mind, back into their own. Some of the new kids didn’t realize know how to go back to their own minds, so she rushed over to help them.

“It’s like waking up from a dream,” She said, quickly. If the Doctor scanned Rachel’s mind while they were in there... “Just blink, and shake your head a little,”

A few more of them disappeared, but at least two stayed, a boy and girl. The boy was crying, while the girl just looked around wildly. Clarice wished that she could use her powers, and force them back into their own minds, but that wasn’t how they worked. She calmed the frantic fear inside of her, and held onto the boy’s hand.

“It’s going to be okay,” She said, calming. She wasn’t very good at this part of leading. She wasn’t very good at leading at all, but Rachel couldn’t focus, and Gus wasn’t there enough, always off on missions. It fell to her, “Don’t worry about it all. Your mind is your home. Just go home.”

It was a lie for someone in the Hound Program. Your mind, your body, neither of them were yours. But they needed to be safe more than they needed the truth right then. The little boy stopped crying for a moment, and he was gone the next second. That left only the girl.

She was younger than they usually were, around nine. She was just a little kid, Clarice thought, too young to be showing a mutation yet. There was nothing visible on her, though, which meant she had to have manifested. The next time, Clarice would have to ask Rachel what had happened. Clarice needed to know who everyone was.  
“Everything is okay,” Clarice said, continuing to lie. She held onto the girl’s hands, and looked deep into her eyes, “You are fine. Better than fine. We’re going to keep you safe, we promise. Don’t worry about any of this.”

“The world is gone,” The girl said, but she kept looking at Clarice’s eyes, “I...I don’t understand,”

“The world isn’t gone,” Clarice said, “It’s just resting. And you’re going to rest too. It’s just like a rest, I promise. Just go home,”

“I don’t want to,” The girl said, “I want to stay here.” Rachel had called Clarice stubborn a few times, affectionately, so Clarice had never realized how truly annoying that trait was. 

“Here isn’t safe anymore,” Clarice said, “It’s going to be dangerous for a little while. But I promise you can come back,”

The girl looked at Clarice for a long time, but eventually she nodded, and closed her eyes. She was gone soon, but Clarice swore that she saw the girl’s heels clicking, three times. It almost made her want to laugh, but she resisted. Now was not the time to laugh, not when the dream slowly dissolved around them.

“We can finish the memory next time,” Rachel said, quickly. She was blinking rapidly, like she couldn’t control it, “I’m sorry,”

“Don’t be,” Gus said. He was still holding himself like he was in the memory, “We don’t need to.”

“What do you mean?” Clarice asked, reaching them, “Everyone but us is out,” She told Rachel, who nodded quickly. 

“I mean, every time I think about that memory, I get a new one,” Gus said, smiling. “I mean, I can remember so much,”

Clarice looked at Rachel, and saw her doubtful expression reflected back at her. That had never happened before. Rachel had helped a few of them find memories before, and usually they could only get that one memory. For Gus to be getting more...

“Be careful,” Clarice said, quickly. She was about to say more, but Rachel dropped to her knees, and then even the grayness of the world started to fall away. “We have to leave. Just be careful, Gus. And...” It was always hard to think of something to say to Rachel before the experiments, “It’ll be over soon, Rachel, I promise,”

A moment later, she was back in her body. She opened her eyes, and stared at the ceiling for a long time. There was no way to tell what time of the day it was, because Hounds didn’t need to know that. Even if there was, she wouldn’t have been able to move her face to see it. Eventually, she went to sleep, to have something to do. But before that, she thought.

Gus’s friend. John. Proudstar. Thunderbird. Whichever was his other name, Gus had never said. He had been training Gus, and he had been good at it. That meant he had practice. That meant that he was with a lot of mutants. The Underground. They were one of Sentinel Services’s biggest targets. Gus could have been one of them, once. He could have been taken. He had been training with them, at least. 

John. He had been so calm with Gus. Clarice wasn’t a very good leader, and she knew that she needed to be calmer. She needed to be more like John. Maybe she could get them out, that way. Maybe she could stop this place.

**Author's Note:**

> ugh, i hate the ending. i don't know how else to fix it, though. tell me what you think, and check me out at valkylicious.tumblr.com


End file.
